Judge temporarily blocks Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship - ABC News

Pending a ruling. Not uncommon.

Then the ruling will get challenged to the next court up and so on until it hits the Supreme Court which will issue a 6-3 ruling agreeing with Trump.

So, for US Federal Court, there's basically three levels: District (trial), Circuit (appeals), and Supreme Court (...of the United States, aka "SCOTUS," a second level appeals court and the final arbiter of federal constitutional questions). This was a lawsuit filed in a District court in Washington state. As everybody gets their pleadings in order, they will move towards a trial. The loser will appeal, and then appeal again.

HOWEVER, in a case like this, which seems to be a huge departure from existing constitutional precedent, and which could seriously fuck over the affected kiddos born after February 19, a trial court judge is within their power to issue a temporary injunction, which basically says, "hold up y'all, this would be crazy, and unless you just wow us with legal brilliance (or SCOTUS fucks us over) it's probably going away, and in the meantime we've all been doing okay with the previous interpretation, so the change is on ice until we get this sorted." It is inherently temporary because nothing's been actually argued or analyzed and decided.

Of course, now THAT will get appealed, because you can appeal stuff other than final decisions, particularly when by their nature they're stuff that needs to apply either to everybody in the country or to no one (versus, like, telling Company A to hold off on selling a piece of land) and that's what SCOTUS will probably rule on well before the actual merits, though in this case it's all of a piece and therefore we'll get a huge hint as to how they're leaning if they overturn the injunction. Letting it stand would imply they agree with the district judge or at least that a couple of justices haven't made up their minds.

People get very emotional about this stuff because the issues ARE emotional and I find it despicable that this is where we are, but the process is gonna process, and nothing final will have happened this quickly.

Because if they actually rule it can be appealed to the Supreme Court, a temporary injunction needs a compelling reason to overrule.

Aileen Cannon abused this bullshit tactic quite a lot in Jack Smith's case.

If the EO is deemed unconstitutional in those states, guess what? It's unconstitutional federally (i.e. everywhere).

Ultimately, the case is likely to be appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

And there it will die. If the SC approves this illegal EO, there will be a 99% chance of Civil War.